Driven Snow
Words: Julia Monteiro
Laying on a hard picnic-style bench in my kitchen, I plug in my wired headphones, and press play on Driven Snow’s new album Mother of Christ. ‘Knots’ is first up. Kieran McGuinness's voice gently surrounds me.
“Everybody’s hoping that I just grow up / quit all of the dreamin’ get on off the road”
Soon, Emily McGuinness accompanies him. In this song – on this album – they are melodicallyintertwined and raw. Listening to this first track feels like a punch to the gut. Vocalization of that ubiquitous feeling of holding steadfast to dreams when others tell you to move on. Just as the McGuinnesses have done, despite jobs, kids, and everything else that life throws at you – what this album was born out of.
“They were the songs that were about our lives,” Kieran tells me.
In one song, “Better Man” McGuinness sings about the endeavor of raising three daughters. He expands, “you want them to be the stereotypes of being that people say are men – you want them to be brave and you want them to be leaders...you realize all the things that you want your kids to be, are also things that your wife is.”
The idea for the song came to him after watching A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic directed by James Mangold. Despite not liking the film, the music struck a chord – “I thought it would be cool to write a song that has a different formula, about refrains and repeated lines.”
Yet writing it still felt so incredibly vulnerable, “I felt like a peeled orange,” McGuinness tells me.
Funnily, I had felt similarly about that song (and whole album) – even though I have no kids, and am only 20. It transcends.
Why?
“It became clear from doing the shows that the stuff that people connected with was stuff that was personal,” McGuinness explains, “they see themselves in it, and they want to talk to us about it afterwards.”
Driven Snow’s music addresses heavy topics – Emily’s grief, Kieran being adopted, and perimenopause. “I sing a song in the show about being adopted and mention Bessborough House and being born in a mother and baby home,” says McGuinness.
While the pair tackle big life obstacles through song, they also address domestic life poetically.
“You iron out all of my creases,” a beautiful (and personal favorite) line from ‘Slowly, Gently.’
McGuinness elaborates, “doing like really basic housework sounds so humdrum and boring, but actually it’s a kind of love language.”
In the same breath, McGuinness explains his and Emily’s writing process, “Emily will write something or I’ll write something, and then it’ll be kind of passed back and forth between us,” however for this album, “I had to relearn how to write songs...I don’t think I can ever go back now after this album.”
The result? Beautiful harmonies with intentional perspective. One that resonates with audiences, in part because “they don’t hear these topics being sung about.”
McGuinness describes it as, “a mix between therapy and oversharing.” An experience that feels cathartic. “There’s a bit of laughing, there’s a bit of crying, there’s a bit of chatting,” McGuinness explains what their gigs are like. Gigs they choose intentionally, having to keep three daughters in mind. But they take it as an opportunity “to show them that you can have an independent, rich, fulfilled life, even and be your own person as you get older”, especially in creative fulfillment, McGuinness emphasizes.
What happens when it actualizes?
A thought provoking album that can be “taken passively and taken actively... whether it's hanging around, doing commutes, or the big shop, or it’s sitting down and putting on the vinyl.”
It can do both.
Mother Of Christ is out now on vinyl, CD and digital. Available in all good record shops and on www.drivensnowmusic.bandcamp.com
Driven Snow play The Whale Theatre, Greystones on November 19th and The Sugar Club on December 3rd. @drivensnowmusic for all info.
